As is known in the art, cloud computing systems contain a large number of servers and hardware devices, servers, storage systems, networking devices, software modules and components. When configuring a highly available (“HA”) computer system these systems are independent and redundant to provide services regardless of single points of failure. When a computer system (“host”) communicates with a storage system (“array”) using network attached storage (“NAS”) provided over a network (“network”) the host, network, and array are single points of failure. Creating an HA service is achieved by mirroring storage volumes (“volume”) to redundant arrays as the volumes are modified by the host thereby creating a copy of the volume and making it available via redundant hosts and networks.
The array contains a module or appliance having a splitter (“splitter”) that splits host operations on a volume into duplicates. A splitter is utilized by replication software services (“replication”) to duplicate volume operations and transport them to a redundant array. The replication reproduces the operation on a redundant volume in a redundant array.
In cloud computing, the host is insulated from the operating system software (“OS”) by use of a hypervisor (“hypervisor”). The hypervisor creates a software-virtualized representation of the host hardware upon which the OS is installed and virtualized creating a virtual machine (“VM”). Hypervisors on many hosts can communicate across networks regarding VM and host health. In addition, hypervisors can use these networks in conjunction with the replicated volume to manage multiple copies of the VM using redundant hosts. The combination of replication and virtual machines provide an enhanced service where virtual machines will be protected against failures in the infrastructure.
Sets of hosts, switches, and arrays are assembled in close proximity to make up a unit of cloud infrastructure (“infrastructure”) sometimes referred to as a pod (“pod”) of devices. The pod components are physically connected via Ethernet networks, for example. The logical configuration of pods components and network creates a platform that is sold or leased as a service (“service”) from a menu of predefined configuration offerings (“offering”) for consumers of cloud computing. Offerings from vendors name the type and quantity of resources such as 3 highly available servers with 16 GB of memory having 4 processors with 20 GB of disk space each and a shared storage volume of 200 GB. This allows for the consumer to use the host and storage resources in predetermined offerings within the pods making up the cloud.